VIKINGS IN WESTERN IBERIA
Introduction:
The taking of captives to later collect ransoms is a well-known practice in the written records of the Viking Age. Examples of it are known from the ninth century onwards: Count Pascwethen from Brittany was ransomed in 854, as were Abbot Louis of Saint Denis and his brother Gauzlin four years later (Nelson 2001, 37), and in 994 the Count of Stade and his brother were captured and 7000 marks demanded in exchange for their freedom (Sawyer 2001, 252). This practice was also perpetuated by Vikings in the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula, as recorded in two documents from the first half of the eleventh century.
Viking Sources:
Regrettably, no earlier records have yet been found. Most of the known surviving sources contemporary with the Vikings in western Iberia or dating from the century immediately after fail to mention the taking of captives or, when they do, what happened to them. So, for instance, the two versions of the Chronicle of Alfonso III, both dated from the end of the ninth or early tenth century, speak of Vikings looting the Spanish coast during the rule of King Ordoño I, between the years 850 and 866 (‘Rotense’ 25; ‘Ad Sebastianum’ 25),1 but include nothing about the exact places and whether captives were taken. Likewise, the eleventh-century Almuqtabis by Ibn Hayyan mentions that a Viking fleet arrived in Lisbon in 844, remaining there for thirteen days, but no further information is given besides the occurrence of three battles (Corriente and Ali Makki 2001, 312). There is a reference to slaves captured on a Viking ship in one account of a naval skirmish off the coast of the Algarve around 859, recorded in Al Marrakusi’s History of AlAndaluz, but nothing is told about where they came from and what happened to them afterwards (Fernández González 1999, 133).2 A document from the year 992 records the reconstruction of a church in northern Galicia, after the original building was destroyed by Vikings several years before, and says its clergy was taken and killed, but we do not know exactly what happened and if a ransom was even attempted (Del Val González de la Peña and Sáez 2005, 7–17). And when in 1024 King Alfonso V of León sanctioned the joining of the diocese of Tui with that of Santiago, so the latter could administer the former due to the desolate state of the city after Viking incursions, the document says the Bishop of Tui and several of his people were taken captive by the attackers (Lucas Alvarez 1998, 152–54) but adds nothing on their final fate, and so no record remains of whether or not they were ransomed. Two exceptions to this often frustrating lack of detailed information exist, both from the eleventh century.
The First Document :
The first comes from the Monastery of S. Salvador de Moreira, in today’s northern Portugal, and was published by Rui Pinto de Azevedo (1973, 91–93). Though dating from April 1018, the original manuscript appears to have been lost, and only a seventeenth-century copy in a codex from the Holy Cross Monastery in Coimbra remains (Pinto de Azevedo 1973, 73). However, Pinto de Azevedo believes it to be credible, both on linguistic grounds and due to the fact that the main character, a man named Amarelo Mestaliz, is mentioned elsewhere in original documents from the late tenth and early eleventh centuries .
The significance of this text :
The significance of this text is not just the fact that it is one of the few written records of ransoming in western Iberia, but also that it manages to be more precise on the time, duration, and place of the attack than most of the other documents ,preserving the memory of a great of number of Vikings who entered the river Douro in the summer of 1015. The expression ‘filius et neptis Lotnimis’, which could lead to the idea that there was some sort of Norse settlement in the region whose inhabitants returned to the looting practices of their ancestors, may simply be a way of saying that the pirate group was enormous, as if whole generations of Vikings had descended upon the Douro. More importantly, the time period of nine months starting from July means that that particular band wintered in modern-day Portugal, a practice known from elsewhere in the Viking world at least since 852 (Nelson 2001, 30), but which here finds one of the few supporting accounts from western Iberia.3 Presumably, one or more defensible Norse bases must have existed, where the loot, captives, or just the ships could be kept safely, but it is not told where these were.
A further piece of information that might concern this particular band is found in the Chronica Gothorum, fully published in the Portugaliae Monumenta Historica along with its twin narrative, the Brevis Historia Gothorum (Herculano 1856, 5–17), and dating probably from the twelfth century. It tells that on 6 September 1016 a group of Vikings attacked the castle of Vermoim (Herculano 1856, 9), located near today’s Vila Nova de Famalicão in the District of Braga. The town is on the banks of the river Ave, which, according to the document from 1018, was the northern limit of the area raided by the Norse band. Pinto de Azevedo proposed that there is a dating error in the Chronica Gothorum, ‘one extra unit in the Era’, he says (1973, 88), which would shift the year of the attack on Vermoim to 1015 and, therefore, include it in the nine months of activity of the Viking group. One may, of course, reject his theory, in which case there are two possibilities: either the band that entered the Douro in 1015 kept looting along the western Iberian coast after April 1016, maybe heading south and attacking the castle of Vermoim on the way back north in September, or the reference in the Chronica Gothorum is to a different and otherwise unknown Viking fleet.
What happened to Amarelo’s daughters :
As for Amarelo Mestaliz, unable to ransom his daughters for himself, he sought the help of a Lady Lupa, with whom he had agreed several years before to sign over his properties in exchange for assistance, should he need it. Lupa, however, refused to give him the required sum, and so Amarelo turned to another woman for help, a Froila Tructesindiz, who gave him fifteen silver solidos (‘XV solidos argenzdeos’), which can safely be assumed to be the amount of the ransom. The girls were released, and two years later Amarelo sold his goods to the latter lady, a transaction recorded in writing along with the history of the Viking incursion which was its origin.
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